A Ping-Pong Comedy? Get Christopher Walken
If nothing else, "Balls of Fury," a gross, funny, and playfully sentimental new comedy from "Reno 911!" and "The State" creators Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, offers a reminder that punch lines may come and go, but a properly timed torrent of water and accompanying spit-take will remain a thing of beauty forever. The film's un-taxing pastiche of other familiar gags is as genially low-brow and retro as the revenge-driven kung-fu movies it intermittently satirizes when not otherwise occupied with groin punches, kicks, grabs, sniffs, and chop-stick stabs.
"Try not to think about it," offers the father of a U.S. Olympic ping-pong phenom as bookmaking Asian gangsters homicidally glare from the stands during the 1988 ping-pong finals in Seoul. But with his father's life hanging in the balance, young Randy Daytona (Brett DelBuono) chokes, is humiliated by his German opponent Karl Wolfschtagg (Mr. Lennon), and is orphaned by emissaries of Feng (Christopher Walken), the ruthless Triad leader to whom his dad (Robert Patrick) was fatally in debt.
With the backstory setup complete, "Balls of Fury" segues to the present day, replacing tousle-haired and apple-cheeked young Randy with the adult Randy (Tony winner Dan Fogler) — remade into such an apologetically flabby-thighed, slack-jawed, and hairy adult mockery of his cute kid persona that the younger viewers in my theater emitted a chorus of involuntary "ewww" when Mr. Fogler first appeared on-screen.
Down and out in Reno, Nev., Randy ekes out a meager living doing table tennis stunts for a disinterested audience of diners at a grade-Z buffet. But potential deliverance soon arrives in the form of comedian George Lopez as FBI Agent Ernie Rodriguez. While Randy has tried to forget, the Bureau has kept tabs on Feng and informed sources say that the criminal mastermind is about to stage the ultimate ping-pong tournament. If Randy wants payback, Agent Rodriguez says, he'll have to "put on big boy pants" and go undercover in the cut-throat underground world of competitive table tennis.
But if Randy is to catch the eye of Feng's ping-pong championship talent scouts, he'll need to revive his game. Under the un-watchful non-eye of blind table tennis master Wong (James Hong), Randy relearns the paddle and ball arts. Not surprisingly, Wong has a niece, and even less surprisingly, the niece, Maggie (Maggie Q.), is outrageously beautiful with or without a ping-pong table. After countless hours sparring in the Wongs' second-floor Chinatown ping-pong dojo, Randy regains his competitive shape (though not his physical shape) and prepares to face the string of opponents whose defeat will lead him to Feng.
Though the film's unambitious comic genre doesn't offer much resistance, Randy Daytona is nevertheless Mr. Fogler's potential breakthrough role. In Randy, Mr. Fogler realistically delivers failed kid star cluelesness, jock arrogance, and an orphan's sub-zero self-esteem and neediness in a John Belushi- and Chris Farley-size comic package. His inevitable love scenes with Ms. Q. contain as much affection as absurdity, and whether lunging, mugging, pouting, loving, sweating, or volleying, his performance is never less than perfectly timed.
"That is one weird dude," Mr. Lopez said of co-star Christopher Walken when introducing Monday night's screening of "Balls of Fury." If he were a saxophone player he would be John Coltrane, if he were a painter he would be Jackson Pollack, but he's a movie star and on-screen in "Balls of Fury," Mr. Walken is, indeed, nearly unhinged. WNEW's late, great ubiquitous Sinatra-boosting nighttime DJ William B. Williams used to exalt his favorite singer by repeatedly saying, "It's the phrasing, the phrasing," when describing the nature of Sinatra's gifts. He might just as well have been talking about Mr. Walken's ability to deliver a dog-eared gag or a pointless aside with such unpredictable and bizarre turns of phrases that one is as likely to ponder his jokes like the notes of a jazz solo as much as laugh. Mr. Garant demonstrates admirable humility and intelligence as a director by stepping back and letting Mr. Walken jam on the script for much of the film's last 40 minutes.
In spite of an occasionally dismaying and queasy comic unease with homosexuality that could be boiled down to, in 7-year-old boy terms, "gays are icky" as opposed to "girls are icky," the relentless celebration in "Balls of Fury" of the human body at a "pull my finger" level is never less than exuberant, if not always exactly funny. Even when it takes the economy route to a cheap gag, the film remains amiable, painless, and fun.
